System Dynamics Training for ICHAD and SMART Africa Teams
On November 5th and 6th, members of the ICHAD and SMART Africa St. Louis team attended a Systems Dynamics (SD) workshop led by Dr. Peter Hovmand, Director of the Social System Design Lab at the Brown School and Mr. Ellis Ballard. The workshop introduced the foundations of system dynamics (SD) and community-based system dynamics (CBSD). Participants had the opportunity to apply their SD knowledge through a hands-on exercise where they developed a model of social, economic and political barriers to service access for women in low-income countries who have experienced gender-based violence. At the end of the workshop, the facilitators solicited feedback from participants on the usefulness of these presentations as training tools and how they could benefit the center’s future activities. Overall, the group agreed that SD would be a valuable asset to future projects.
Dr. Peter Hovman and Mr. Ellis Ballard also presented a poster based on the System Dynamics workshop at the Relationship and Sexual Violence Initiative Event at Washington University on December 4th. This poster presented content and conceptualization of the workshop that resulted from the training.